Celebrating 40 years of fine art at UCLan

An exhibition to mark the 40th anniversary of the fine art degree at the University of Central Lancashire has opened in the county.

Recall celebrates the art work of a selection of UCLan’s pioneer fine art graduates and lecturers who were involved with the course at the very beginning, with the first cohort graduating in 1977. It is based at two sites, first in The Storey in Lancaster then at UCLan’s PR1 Gallery in Preston, in recognition of the early years of the degree when it was based in Lancaster until 1985 when UCLan’s Victoria Building opened.

In total 27 of the artists who graduated between 1977 - 1981 are exhibiting, including sculptor Andy Goldsworthy OBE who studied at what was then Preston Polytechnic until 1978. Theresa Taylor and Judith Trescatheric are the exhibition’s curators and both graduated in the same year as Goldsworthy.

Theresa said: “We’ve talked about this reunion exhibition for the last 20 years so it’s exciting to see it all come together. Many of the graduates have kept in touch over the years and as soon as we suggested the idea we suddenly had a large group of artists.”

I’m sure people visiting this exhibition will really enjoy seeing this varied body of work, each with its own story to tell 40 years after it all began.

The exhibition includes sculptures, paintings, print work and other wall based installations. Many of the artists have had other careers alongside their work and will bring a new perspective to the craft 40 years on.

“I worked as an art therapist and psychotherapist for 33 years before I them came back to UCLan to do a Masters in Fine Art in 2015,” said Theresa. “It was strange coming back after all this time aged 56 with much more life experience it was nice to come back and focus on that again.”

Theresa added: “On completing the BA course many of the students continued as practising artists, others balanced their artwork with other commitments and others stopped practising for many years. I’m sure people visiting this exhibition will really enjoy seeing this varied body of work, each with its own story to tell 40 years after it all began.”

Recall is open to the public at The Gallery at the Storey, Meeting House Lane, Lancaster from 24 October to 1 November 10.30am – 4.00pm every day except Sundays and late night until 8.00pm on Thursday 27 October. It will then move to UCLan’s PR1 Gallery in Victoria Building from Monday 6 November until Wednesday 29 November 9.00am – 5.00pm excluding weekends. See The Storey/UCLan websites for further details.